So, just as a handy reminder, here's another "random gallery of lone shooters":

This is Joseph Paul Franklin, a serial killer who not only murdered 20 people (a large number of them mixed-race couples) but also attempted the assassinations of both Larry Flynt and Vernon Jordan. Franklin was a longtime Klansman who subscribed to white-supremacist Christian Identity beliefs about race-mixing.

This is Paul Hill, a Florida anti-abortion zealot who gunned down an abortion provider and his bodyguard outside a Pensacola clinic. Hill, who was executed in 2003, expressed no remorse for the murders, and told reporters he expected "a great reward in Heaven."

Hill, incidentally, was only following in the footsteps of another "lone gunman" named Michael Griffin, who had gunned down Dr. David Gunn outside an abortion clinic two years earlier in Pensacola. [Couldn't locate his picture.]

Then there was John Salvi, who walked into a Brookline, Mass., clinic in December 1994 and opened fire, killing a receptionist and wounding three others. At trial, Salvi testified that he acted out of a belief in a conspiracy against the Catholic Church. He later committed suicide in prison.

Another abortion-doctor sniper was James Kopp, who was convicted of murdering Dr. Bernard Slepian at his home in 1998, but who also was responsible for a long string of anti-abortion sniper shootings. He was an active member of the anti-abortion group "Lamb of Christ." His trial is currently under way.

And let's not forget our bravest Aryan warrior, Buford O. Furrow, who walked into a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles and began shooting at children and women -- that, after having gunned down an unarmed Filipino postman on his route. Furrow was a longtime Washington state resident and Christian Identity follower, active at the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho.

Of course, all these folks were considered "isolated incidents" at the time. Certainly, no one at the time connected them with mainstream Christianity.

This was, in fact, simple common sense. Most Christians reject murder in their names categorically -- it's hard to imagine a more un-Christian act. No one stooped to smearing all Christians with the acts of these fringe, often mentally unstable, figures whose "Christianity" is a perversion of the religion's core beliefs. In fact, not only did even the harshest critics steer clear of any such suggestion, but it became something of a faux pas to point out that these folks do, in fact, claim to be "Christians".

Too bad Michelle Malkin and her cohorts can't say the same when it comes to radical Muslims who go on "lone gunman" rampages. It is true that dismissing these cases as "isolated incidents" is nonsense -- as I've just said, the wellsprings of hate are many these days, and we can't be certain where Haq's arose, though radical Islam certainly is a prime candidate.

Neither can it be said, however, that these men any more reflect mainstream Islam than Buford Furrow represents mainstream Christianity. Saying so, in fact, is just another kind of hate.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.